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The proposed AI pledge for COP31 is a policy story about how AI's growing energy and emissions footprint gets governed. Critics say its lack of concrete targets and reliance on self-reported steps makes it hard to verify, and some argue it leans on the claim that AI can offset data centre impacts. For AI readers, the key question is whether voluntary commitments from AI companies will be backed by measurable, independently checked climate standards.

Sources coveringAI Now Institute, Wired, WISeKey

COP31 pledge on AI lacks climate targets, critics say

AI Now InstituteOctober 27, 20261 min read

Ahead of COP31, a proposed artificial intelligence pledge lacks any concrete climate targets and allows signatories to determine what steps they take. "We can't trust them to grade their own homework," says AI Now's Alli Finn. The post COP31 pledge on AI lacks climate targets, critics say appeared first on AI Now Institute.

The pledge doesn’t acknowledge the link with fossil fuels, even as the data center boom threatens tech companies’ pledges to reduce planet-warming emissions. Some experts worry that part of the pledge plays into an industry narrative, which asserts that data center impacts can be mitigated by using AI to address climate change.

“We have seen over many, many years that voluntary pledges are not enough and that self-regulation by industry does not work — we can’t trust them to grade their own homework,” said Alli Finn, head of community partnerships at AI Now Institute, a nonprofit that studies the societal effects of AI.

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